Silent Mornings Can Make Us Appreciate the Silent Night- Purity 608
Purity 608 12/22/2021 Purity 608 Podcast
Good morning,
Today’s photo of a blue sky and blazing sun over a glistening ice
frosted forest comes to us from a friend who was gracious enough to share this
view that they captured while they were presumably hiking on Hogsback Mountain near
Marlboro Vermont on Monday. To be honest
the pickings of cool views from my friends has been scarce lately and I was
thrilled to see my friend’s beautiful photo. So if you should be out and about
and see something worthwhile, take a quick pic and share it, for your friends
would love to see it.
Today is the hump day before Christmas and all through the house not a
creature is stirring because I get up before the crack of dawn to connect with
my heavenly Father through prayer and meditation to thank Him for the life that
He has given me and to remind myself of just how amazingly blessed I have been to
discover who I am in Christ.
Over the last few days, I had been slacking in my quiet time with the
Lord as I felt the urge to prepare for a discipleship counseling session I had on
Monday evening and decided to unpack quite the personal testimony yesterday to commemorate
the birth and life of my beloved son, Brennan.
When you walk in the spirit on a continuous basis, sometimes you feel led
to abandon your regular routine to attend to other matters. In my experience,
following these leadings has always led to me being prepared for the Lord’s
service or gives Him glory in some way. If
you are going to follow the “Mighty Rushing Wind” of the Holy Spirit, you will
discover that there can be quite a bit of spontaneity in your life as you
answer His call to be used by God to grow and encourage and serve others.
However, after the wind blows you all about, you will feel the joy that
comes from your daily spiritual practice when it isn’t circumvented by other matters
that the Spirit draws you to. In the
aftermath of serving and taking care of things that pop up, you can find rest
and comfort in just another “normal” day in the Lord’s quiet still presence
where your reflection on things past, present, and future just gives you
peace.
In one of my discipleship relationships, a brother in Christ always asks
me about my “quiet time with the Lord” and sometimes the question really
convicts and annoys me because I realize that I have neglected the study of God’s
word or have been short in my times of prayer and meditation. He asks the question because he knows it is
important to spend time connecting with the Lord personally and just how easy
it is to neglect it.
When I am questioned and feel I have been lacking in seeking the quiet
time of the Lord, I will get annoyed and start to think of a response in which
I will defend myself by saying something like : “I’ve got important things to
do!” or “You don’t know all I’m doing for the Lord already!” or even worse will
have a temptation to point the question back at my friend as an accusation: “What about you? What are you doing for the kingdom?”
When those responses come up in my head, I know that I have strayed from
what I should be doing and realize that my pride has been activated. When your pride rises up, you should stop and
remind yourself of John 15:4-5, where Jesus tells his disciples:
John 15:4-5 (NKJV)
4 Abide
in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it
abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.
5 I am
the vine, you are the branches. He who abides in Me, and I in him, bears
much fruit; for without Me you can do nothing.
So as we are on a collision course with that Silent Night of
Christmas Eve, in just two days, and maybe scrambling to make everything “just
right”, try to stop and take some time to connect with the Lord through reading
His word, by just taking a few moments to rest and reflect on Him in prayer, or
by having an impromptu conversation with God.
Walking in the Spirit is just a matter of living in God’s
presence from moment to moment where we take our lives and put them in His
hands and listen for His wisdom to guide us in the way we should go.
Once you establish a habit of “walking and talking with God”, you
will realize that you have entered into a spiritual dimension of life that few
of those who surround you are experiencing.
You will come to see the fruit of the Spirit of love, joy, and peace
grow in your life and you will realize that without Him we can do nothing.
So draw close to God, abide in His presence, and share the love that God pours into you with the people that He has brought into your life. The Christmas Spirit isn’t about running around like a mad man being obnoxious and boastful about the magnificent decorations that you have put on display to scream Merry Christmas, it is about reminding others of the reason for the season that began when God came to earth in the flesh and the heavens were invaded by angelic heavenly hosts on a silent night to proclaim the peace that only comes through Jesus Christ.
Today’s Bible verse is
drawn from “The NLT Bible Promise Book for Men”.
This morning’s meditation verses are:
Proverbs 3:5-6 (NLT2)
5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend
on your own understanding.
6 Seek his will in all you
do, and he will show you which path to take.
Today’s verses should be memorized and held in your heart because you will be able to stand on these verses every day a
I am more familiar with the NKJV version of these verses that says:
Proverbs 3:5-6 (NKJV)
5 Trust in the LORD with all your heart, And lean not
on your own understanding;
6 In all your ways
acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.
I mean, this is our prescription. In all our ways we are to acknowledge Him by saying in effect that His ways are better than our ways and that we not only recognize that intellectually, but we also truly acknowledge it by trying to conform to His ways of thinking and by changing our behaviors to align with His word, experientially.
The Christian life is to be lived out every day. The benefits of our faith are not just for eternity. They are for here and now. Our lives are transformed when we trust in the Lord with all our hearts and lean not on our worldly understanding and instead endeavor to allow Him to direct our paths.
Our walk, our relationship, with God is supposed to be interactive. We acknowledge His ways and examine our ways and try to adjust our thoughts and behaviors to be more like His. Because this is a spiritual relationship, it is not just about following a list of rules it is about thinking about our experience and communicating with God to receive His feedback and blessings that flow as a consequence of stepping onto His path for living.
So keep walking and talking with God. Memorize these verses and use them to remind you who God is, who you are, and which way you are going in this life. His ways are higher than our ways and when we walk with Him we invariably rise up out of the darkness and confusion of this world and find a life where we can say with assurance: it is well with my soul.
As always, I invite all to go to mt4christ.org where I always share insights from prominent Christian theologians and counselors to assist my brothers and sisters in Christ with their walk.
Today we continue sharing from A.W. Tozer’s Advent Devotional – From Heaven, for Day 26 as this current resource series will lead us to Christmas Eve.
As always, I share this information for educational purposes
and encourage all to purchase A.W. Tozer’s books for your own private study and
to support his work.
DAY 26
LIFE AND LIGHT TO ALL HE BRINGS
I am the light of the world. Whoever
follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.
JOHN 8:12
This is the message we have heard
from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.
1 JOHN 1:5
Here is the wonder of the nature of
God: God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. This is the wonder of life
and light: the Scriptures mix up and do not try to keep separated light and
life. “Light and life to all He brings, risen with healing in His wings.” When
that was written, theology was written, for life and light are one. This means
that eternal life is also the light, the light of every man that cometh into
the world. And I suppose that there is something deeper than morals here.
A great German theologian a
generation ago wrote a book that has become very famous in learned circles. And
in that book he declares that the idea of holiness goes back to personality.
That you think of the holiness of God as a strange thing before you think of
the person of God. I think he is right. I am quite sure he is right, and he
says that the idea of purity is not the first idea of holiness. The first idea
that comes to the mind, or that came to the mind, when the word holy was
suggested was not the thought of being pure, but the idea of being greater
than, higher than, other than, beyond, different from—in its self-sufficiency,
uncreated substance of life. It is that without a pronoun, that without a
personal pronoun, that—and then we attribute purity and holiness to God.
So when God says, “Be holy, because
I am holy” (1 Peter 1: 16 NIV), He’s talking about moral purity, He’s talking
about spiritual cleanness. But beyond that, in the back of that, and prior to
that is the solemn, indescribable something that cannot be put into words: that
there exists a nature, a substance in the universe that is life and light, and
it is a thing, and it is that. But it also has personality and, that
personality is God. And the wonder of this passage in John is the nature of
God. God is light. God is life. And in Him is no darkness at all.
Tozer, A. W. (2016). From heaven: a
28-day advent devotional. Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers.
---------------------------more
tomorrow------------------------
Join our “Victory
over the Darkness” or “The Bondage Breaker” series of Discipleship Classes via
the mt4christ247 podcast!
at https://mt4christ247.podbean.com, You can also find it on Apple podcasts
(https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-mt4christ247s-podcast/id1551615154). The mt4christ247 podcast is also available on Google Podcasts,
Amazon Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartradio, and Audible.com.
Email me
at mt4christ247@gmail.com to receive the class materials, share your progress, and to be
encouraged.
Encouragement for the Path of Christian
Discipleship